Salaverry Hangs’em Up

One of the better MMA middleweights has decided to call it a career as according to Mike Sloan of sherdog.com, Ivan Salaverry, after a month removed from his most recent fight – a first-round loss to Rousimar Palhares – has decided to retire from competition; Salaverry leaves MMA with a 12-7 won-loss record. Salaverry, in explaining his retirement, told Sherdog.com, “Basically, I am just not prioritizing fighting anymore. Even though I love fighting and I had a great run and I enjoyed it, I’ve transitioned to other things. There are quite a few variables as to why I stepped away and not just one. I’m older now; I’m 37 and not 27. I also have some injuries that are just not recovering, too. And within that scope, I have my school and my two kids. Fighting is not just a priority anymore.”

His decision to retire isn’t exactly a surprise to those in the know as his fight with Palhares was his last fight with Zuffa LLC (parent company of the UFC), not to mention that Salaverry had hinted that his performance in that fight would go a long ways towards his final decision. While he was a competitor, Salaverry was and is still a big proponent of “fighters’ rights”; specifically, he would like to see in place a pension or investment program for the fighters not unlike the other mainstream sports as Salaverry thinks that the vast majority of ex-fighters have either fallen deep into debt or can’t financially afford medical insurance to treat existing injuries.

Salaverry had a very good career in MMA with a career that consisted of 19 fights in a 9-year span; he burst onto the UFC scene with an upset win over Andrei Semenov at UFC 37 back in 2002. After taking a loss to Matt Lindland at UFC 39, Salaverry returned to action in the octagon in 2004 with a big win over Tony Fryklund at UFC 50; he would follow that up with a win over Joe Riggs at UFC 52 in 2005, but would proceed to lose 3 of his next 4 fights in the span of three years. Whatever Ivan decides to do in his post-MMA life, I am certain he will be a success at it like he was in the octagon.